From the onset, Britteney Black Rose Kapri’s 2018 collection of poetry—and tweets, statements, proclamations, affirmations of body, autonomy, and self—not only confronts traditional notions of a white patriarchal gaze, it centralizes it. As Danez Smith, award-winning poet, notes in Black Queer Hoe’s introduction, this book is not for everyone. As a white queer reader myself, I am not counted among the audience prioritized by this work, though this does not diminish its powerful impact. The ideas and themes that Kapri’s work concerns itself with are directly tied to incredibly personal and bodily experiences, and they are not universal. There will always be an audience with preconceived notions about the person Kapri depicts through her work; those assumptions are embraced into the complex web that her words weave—they are dissected, stomped on, turned inside out, and fiercely protected. The work does not need to concern itself with how these labels are understood by each reader, only that Kapri has and continues to wrestle with them herself, within all the complexity of herself as a poet who contains anger, joy, hate, and love—and can navigate the world with all of these elements accompanying her.
This duality—which may not even need to be addressed as such, as every thought and feeling expressed is as much a part of the other—appears throughout. In “reasons imma Hoe,” the typically derogatory term seems both full of meaning and completely void of it, “i carried condoms. i let / him fuck me without a condom. i said no. i said yes. i / spoke. i didn’t bleed. i did exactly what he asked me to. i / told him that shit was weird. i blocked him. i fucked her / man. i was breathing.” By ‘daring’ to survive the harassment and hypocrisy detailed by this poem, the subject will remain a hoe in the eyes of those who have deemed her as such—anything she does proves their predetermined theory. Kapri may seem resigned to accept this social assignment of her body and its actions, though her words convey anything but resignation; she stays active within and outside these spheres of preconception.
Later, in “Bitch,” the crux of how others will perceive Kapri and how she understands herself emerges. “men love to love me, i am that Bitch. / men love to love the idea of me / they don’t think i bitch. / men love me until i’m that crazy / bitch. men don’t want me / calling myself a Bitch so they can.” This moment is about more than a reclamation of an insult or patient explanation of African American Vernacular English (AAVE); the work has already established itself outside of these specific white and male perspectives. The poem recognizes both the intense relevance and meaninglessness of language for Kapri as an individual; regardless of whether she sees herself as a loving, take-no-prisoner Bitch or “that crazy bitch,” others will use the word to fit their own narrative around her. This book may be a counter narrative to these projections of others, but it is much better served by thinking of it as a narrative on its own. As Kapri says in “a reading guide: for white people reading my book,” “all we want is reparations / and to be left the fuck alone.” Her world is only shared with those who exist outside of lives experienced as black, queer, and fat as much she allows, while those who do recognize and revel in the identifiable. This experience, both individual and multiple in its approach to each reader, is not about to be taken away. She will continue to shape it herself.
Black Queer Hoe is at once a fast and slow read; while it is short in length and completely enveloping, the words will sit with a reader long after they finish. Multiple rereads may be encouraged—with each, they will only get louder and more encompassing.